How was art, literature and theatre in the GDR?

How was art, literature and theatre in the GDR?

Any noteworthy pieces?

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youtu.be/se-8CsPBDF8
imdb.com/title/tt0085730/?ref_=nv_sr_1
imdb.com/title/tt0097095/?ref_=nv_sr_2
youtube.com/watch?v=QZpIjg0UhxE)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Golzow
imdb.com/title/tt6020104/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
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imdb.com/title/tt0230320/
youtube.com/watch?v=2gTWoFayY_Y
filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de/index.php?action=lexikon&tag=det&id=944
youtube.com/watch?v=i5IpBFXcIYA
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archive.org/stream/braunbuchBRD/braunbuch_djvu.txt
youtube.com/watch?v=M66WD7VoxtI
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Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht's plays and librettos. Here's a clip of the East German production of Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahoganny.
youtube.com/watch?v=xHhViAah3QI
Ernst Busch lieder
youtube.com/watch?v=grdQaJ8A8VE
youtube.com/watch?v=aJD0eI61ifs
East German cinema
youtube.com/watch?v=OVrMkhlMZeM
youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-higJILA8
youtube.com/watch?v=Djf5uOkmhSc
youtube.com/watch?v=jk1tHxfdJrA

Album of Ernst Busch lieder. Recorded live in East Berlin.
youtube.com/watch?v=4wO0A2Vd1Q4
Hans Eisler lieder
youtube.com/watch?v=_5X2BvMS4yQ
youtube.com/watch?v=0VgWqKX7FM0
The novels of Bertolt Brecht are worth reading too (especially Die Dreigroschenroman which got a special East German re-release in 1954).

youtu.be/se-8CsPBDF8

thank you guys

Everything bei Heiner Müller (you should find English translations) and the two underground docs by Thomas Heise (on PtP and KG).
Music is mostly garbage and I am actually writing my dissertation about GDR culture.
imdb.com/title/tt0085730/?ref_=nv_sr_1 (on ptp)
imdb.com/title/tt0097095/?ref_=nv_sr_2

I seriously dig Sarah Kirsch (not sure about translations) and Bettina Wegner (youtube.com/watch?v=QZpIjg0UhxE) but it's not for you if you are triggered by feminism.

As for movies check you Heiner Carow and Wolfgang Kohlhaase. Both sometimes made regime friendly movies just to have some "space" to work on more ambigious stuff right after. It's pretty interesting to work you way through their filmography.
If you wanto get really deep: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Children_of_Golzow

This was released last year but it totally feels like a GDR movie and has a lot of people involved with GDR cinema behind the cameras. It's also simpyl amazing: imdb.com/title/tt6020104/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
A lot of this is socialist Kitsch. Busch, Eisler and Brecht are beyong criticism tho.
City and the Puhdhys stole massively from Western bands and never dared critizing the SED. Fuck them for real and listen to Sweet, Deep Purple and Jethro Tull.
Ugh! youtube.com/watch?v=mWXDRgapAf0

thank you very much!

deutsch?

Stolen or not, 'Am Fenster' is a great tune.

Family photo that fits the bill. Music at the Kristall-Palast in Magdeburg, 1963

Yeah, maybe it just over-charged with nostalgia and felt-resistence so much that its status isn't justified.
Japp.

Das ist sicher richtig. Glaube aber nicht, dass ich als Westler einer Ostalgie anheim falle. Finde das Lied einfach schön.

Reminds me of Horst Fischer's orchestra.
youtube.com/watch?v=tgeMNetbs8Y

Just asked yourself where you first heard it. And what the context was.
The song is okay, but the it's überladen with meaning.

I honestly don't remember. I recall already knowing the song when I got the record as a birthday present from an Ostzonenzivildienstkollege

Auferstanden aus Ruinen for one. Far superior to the Deutschlandlied

>Ostzonenzivildienstkollege
*pats you on the back and offers you a glass of water*

You're like a little baby

What?

Mid 90s it was perfectly normal to call Neufünfland the Ostzone. People from there were zonis. Local racism on a banter level if you want. As a reaction to this I got said record.

I don't like either. They should have made Busch's Arbeiter, Bauern the anthem. Far more serious and threatening.

You are both wrong
youtube.com/watch?v=DwdzC8g45xE

youtube.com/watch?v=RUOaU6BaDTw

It had been mentioned before ITT and it's pretty bad. I think people are only posting it because it's some kind of meme.

Defa kino isn't a fucking meme, user.
youtube.com/watch?v=6CHPLQMgS4c

Believe me, I know WAY more DEFA movies than you do. Thälmann is trash. I posted some better movies already.

Jewish Marxist crap, usually typical of communist infested states like so called "east Germany" aka "Mitteldeustchland" Degenerate art. Entartete Kunst.

...

>Mitteldeustchland
Yeah, well you suck at German bruh.

Socially speaking East Germany was more conservative than West Germany.

Nope it doesn't matter how cuckservative it was, it was still a Jewish controlled Marxist regime that promoted white genocide by including Africans in East Germany in the name of "socialist brotherhood" or some internationalist shit.

It depends on what you are talking about and when. Women for example had like a 93% employment rate in the GDR which was waaaay higher than in Western Germany. And, for example, in the 50s your lower class family background didn't determine your career. Plus both abortion and homosexuality where legalized in the GDR when abortion is still (sort of) illegal in Germany.
>jewish
>in the GDR
lol faggot read a book. They had like 130 Jews in the GDR by the 70s. None of them wielded political power.
>inb4 Gysi
Not a Jew and he had no power.

Better than any fascist rubbish.

>cuckservative
>unironically using that word in 2018
shiggydigdig fag boy

Better than actual genocide like the German empire carried out in Namibia.

Not that guy but what kind of a comparison is that supposed to be? If you want post WW2 colonial crimes, look for the UK

>I know WAY more DEFA movies than you do
What's your favorite DEFA film then? Also what in particular do you dislike about Ernst Thalmann? I personally find it kind of weird that the actor who played socialist hero Ernst Thalmann later defected to West Germany. Kek.
youtube.com/watch?v=Ih-Owo-4O1o
Explain exactly what you find "degenerate." Don't just spew buzzwords.

>that promoted white genocide by including Africans in East Germany
Which were not allowed to marry, have relationships with Germans and were unknowingly put on birth control.
Pic related. I don't enjoy those "optimistic" early movies cause they are borderline propaganda. Later on the filmmakers found ways to express themselves and to criticize the state without risking their career. Heiner Müller said that meaningful art needs dictatorships and I sort of agree. I like the coding of messaged cause decoding them is a highly rewarding experience. Also some of the GDR acting is just stellar, so much better than Western movies at least.

Honorable mentions
- Der Dritte
- Insel der Schwäne
- Alle meine Mädchen
- Der Mann, der nach Oma kam

If you want some agi-prop I recommended imdb.com/title/tt0230320/ for the lulz.

The only decent composer, Hanns Eisler, a Jew, became an alcoholic and was thrown over to the West by security men.
Went to the US, was persecuted as a pinko and deported to Bundesrepublik.

Busch, writer of many songs that Eisler composed, spouted nothing but Weltrevolution garbage and no other composer or any other artist existed in the GDR.

At least the last Prussian army could keep it's outer appearance, if only replaced with Soviet weaponry.

The 'art' of GDR is what you call stagnation, like Austria before the Viennese operetta. At least nigger music wasn't everywhere like in the West.

And I mean this country could not produce a single decent literary work and not even a single watchable movie either, which is an accomplishment in itself, when the Third Reich produced dozens of great movies (hell, dozen great war propaganda movies) even under Goebbels heavy cencorship.

>same fagging /pol/tard without actual knowledge detected
>not a single decent literary work
Heiner Müller, Sarah Kirsch, Chista Wolf, Stefan Hermelin, Jurek Becker (who wrote the book Jakob der Lügner which was nominated for an Oscar), Herman Kant, Stefan Heym etc. >inb4 the pleb asks "literally who?"

If you would know what you are talking about you would attack music and cinema but GDR-literature is actually GOAT.

>Jakob der Lügner which was nominated for an Oscar
I meant the film version obviously.

Only one of those I've not heard before and rest have not produced anything outside 'Socialist realism'.

This is not even ideological problem, because Soviet Union could produce some decent literacy works inside the very tight Marxist-Leninist though during Dzugasvili's reign; and few movies, even about subjects that the official state said did not exist (like the well known 'Z/K' movie).

Of course, if you have no standards at all, you could call these 'writers' able. Eisler was a good composer, even if he went little bit too far with his almost Concrete compositions.

Thanks for the recommendations. They look interesting. Insel der Schwäne seems to have gone through a lot of editing in order to follow party line. Most of those seemed to have generated great protest too. As you say the towing of the party line was much more authoritarian in the early years. The movie Meine Frau Macht Musik was banned for having no social message and being too decadent. I personally find Frank Schobel and Chris Doerk very interesting because of the "western" style of their music. It definitely wouldn't have flown only a few years earlier.
youtube.com/watch?v=2gTWoFayY_Y
Though he spent his later years in exile in the US, Weill was really East German in heart and his operas and operettas were often performed in East Germany. He should really count as East German culture.

The point is that East Germany, unlike any other German state, didn't carry out mass ethnic killings, no matter how much fascists cry about white genocide, and wasn't a fascist infested reincarnation of the reich like West Germany.

>rest have not produced anything outside 'Socialist realism'.
You are objectively wrong. Every one of them produced stuff that that isn't 'Socialist realism'. But nice try loser.

Do you know about this? Ill assume you do: filmlexikon.uni-kiel.de/index.php?action=lexikon&tag=det&id=944
I prefer 80s stuff tho.

>Heiner Müller (German: [haJnɐ mʏlɐ]; 9 January 1929 – 30 December 1995) was a German (formerly East German) dramatist, poet, writer, essayist and theatre director. Described as "the theatre's greatest living poet" since Samuel Beckett, Müller is arguably the most important German dramatist of the 20th century after Bertolt Brecht.[citation needed] His "enigmatic, fragmentary pieces" are a significant contribution to postmodern drama and postdramatic theatre.[1]
> 'Socialist realism'.

>Women for example had like a 93% employment rate
That has nothing to do with conservative nationalism, of which East Germany had plenty
>Plus both abortion and homosexuality where legalized in the GDR when abortion is still (sort of) illegal in Germany.
Homosexuality was still viewed as deviant by the population.

Busch was great you pleb
youtube.com/watch?v=i5IpBFXcIYA

>conservative nationalism,
You never mentioned nationalism. The East German "nationalism" is a very perculiar one but generally speaking are right with your last statement.
>Homosexuality was still viewed as deviant by the population.
Prove it.

Also homosexuality was illegal in Western Germany until the mid 90s. So even if you are right by stating
>Homosexuality was still viewed as deviant by the population.
you would need to show me that it was different in the Federal Republic.

My point is not that DDR>BRD but that modernity doesn't have a telos and you can't always say state x is more modern than state y. Things are complicated and the the narrative of Socialism was always to be super modern which yielded some "modern" results.

By the 80s tho, and I already said that, you are right. Things looked very different in the 50s and 60s tho.

youtube.com/watch?v=NrOdpcKi4t8

...

>you are now aware that these two posts represent the average historical konwledge people on this board have

Completely shit just like everything that came from communism.

Who called in the pleb brigade?
youtube.com/watch?v=DTV92wqYjfA

you are completely shit, the fuck is with these comments

Mate the melody is very similar to the (Austrian) "Gott schütze Kaiser Franz" and the lyrics are by Becher who is pleb as fuck. Garbage hymne, even compared to the Deutschlandlied.

It's turbo-plebs who think Veeky Forums is /pol/ with dates trying to derail this thread. OP was smart enough to pose a pretty specific questions so their macro-based memem """education""" doesn't impress anyone.

There was like a whole genre of fantasy films for kids called Märchenfilm. Apparently those films were really popular. Most of them were based on German fairy tales.

>the melody is very similar to the (Austrian) "Gott schütze Kaiser Franz"
You mean, unlike the Deutschlandlied that just has exactly the same melody as Gott beschütze Franz den Kaiser? Idiot
Also, the lyrics fit post-war Germany way better than Fallersleben's lyrics

>Things looked very different in the 50s and 60s tho
that's completely right. 2 if my family members haben in die DDR rübergemacht back then, because their future looked much brighter there. And indeed both had good careers, one as a musician, see photo above, the other as orthopedic shoemaker.

>having """socialist""" conformist Kleinbürger in your family
That's nice

the deeply red part of the family, yes. Good contrast to the brown half.

The fuck are you on about? I know the melody is the same in Deutschlandlied and "Franz". Auferstanden has a similar melody to both those pieces - obviously. My point was that the melody is shit and Becher (who is really a shit poet) lyrics don't improve it.
Yes, this is always left out in the pre-wall narrative. A lot of people went to the GDR in those years. A major example of a anachronistic construction claiming that 1950s GDR is the same as late 1980s. The netto migration is mostly positive in the 50s. You obviously would need to ask who went where but a shit ton of people with NSDAP past were frightened as fuck in the GDR and fled.

*frightened as fuck in the Bundesrepublik and fled.

youtube.com/watch?v=72zP2P-Gq-I
youtube.com/watch?v=WH6Ajowgg4U
youtube.com/watch?v=3h4EKdpW3MI

The BRD used many soldiers and officials from the Third Reich though.

Soundtrack from a Tv show about a Stasi agent
youtube.com/watch?v=ZhbzynqNDh4

Frage: "Herr Bundeskanzler, werden die Generale Adolf Hitlers auch die Generale Konrad Adenauers sein?" Adenauer: "Ich glaube, dass mir die Nato 18-jährige Generale nicht abnehmen wird."
Question: "Herr Bundeskanzler, will the generals of Adolf Hitler also be the generals of Konrad Adenauer?"
Adenauer:"I believe the NATO won't buy 18 year old generals."

Also this: archive.org/stream/braunbuchBRD/braunbuch_djvu.txt

I wasn't denying it didn't make strategic sense. The image just doesn't make sense in that context. It implies the DDR was somehow closer to Drittes Reich than BDR.

*BRD

Oh, okay. Not that guy. Can't deny the DDR carried on the German military tradition which the Bundeswehr didn't.
youtube.com/watch?v=M66WD7VoxtI
Still ambivalent about that. On one hand it's a good thing to let Prussia die for real otoh I like historical stuff. And stuff like the uniforms and Wachwechsel have a much longer tradition than just the 3rd Reich.
youtube.com/watch?v=RDLu3mXux18
youtube.com/watch?v=OPUft3dcaQ4
The Wachbataillon is kinda clowny in comparison
youtube.com/watch?v=yRIDh6YP7nY

The question is about generals. Not Offiziere und Unteroffiziere which were free to join the Bundeswehr.
Yeah, but don't read too deep into that. The the Bundeswehr also carried many traditions from the 3rd Reich (naming the armor after wildcats, singing the Panzerlied etc.). The Bundeswehr got rid of some traditions not to distance itself from the Reich but from the (totalitarian) GDR that kept them.
This is accurate but to be fair so did the GDR. In fact no GDR-institution had more nazis than the NVA. Source related.

I actually hadn't heard of rabbit films before. Danke schon. 80s DDR stuff is definitely interesting for how "culturally liberal" it is in contrast to the older, stodgy propaganda stuff like the Ernst Thalmann movies. Kek.